All posts by bsdman

Currently working as an IT Manager. Worked for an OIT company as a Network Engineer in 2011. Worked for a Medical IT company as the Network Administrator 2009-2011. Worked as the Senior Systems Administrator at a computer reseller from 2005-2009. Worked as a Computer Consultant for several small companies from 2007-2009. Worked as a Computer Technician at a computer reseller from 2002-2004.

Tmobile Band 12

Tmobile bought up quite a bit of the 700MHz spectrum, but I wanted to see where it was being deployed.

Map of Deployments and other Information
http://maps.spectrumgateway.com/t-mobile-700-mhz-spectrum.html

How to find current band on iPhone
Open the Dialer
*3001#12345#*
Press Dial/Talk
This enables Field Test Mode
Navigate to LTE > Service Cell Info
Where it says Freq_band_ind that’s the band you’re currently utilizing. In my case it’s Band 2

http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/lte-long-term-evolution/lte-frequency-spectrum.php

LTE BAND
NUMBER DOWNLINK UPLINK WIDTH_OF_BAND DUPLEX_SPACING BAND_GAP
1 1920 – 1980 2110 – 2170 60 190 130
2 1850 – 1910 1930 – 1990 60 80 20
3 1710 – 1785 1805 -1880 75 95 20
4 1710 – 1755 2110 – 2155 45 400 355
5 824 – 849 869 – 894 25 45 20
6 830 – 840 875 – 885 10 35 25
7 2500 – 2570 2620 – 2690 70 120 50
8 880 – 915 925 – 960 35 45 10
9 1749.9 – 1784.9 1844.9 – 1879.9 35 95 60
10 1710 – 1770 2110 – 2170 60 400 340
11 1427.9 – 1452.9 1475.9 – 1500.9 20 48 28
12 698 – 716 728 – 746 18 30 12
13 777 – 787 746 – 756 10 -31 41
14 788 – 798 758 – 768 10 -30 40
15 1900 – 1920 2600 – 2620 20 700 680
16 2010 – 2025 2585 – 2600 15 575 560
17 704 – 716 734 – 746 12 30 18
18 815 – 830 860 – 875 15 45 30
19 830 – 845 875 – 890 15 45 30
20 832 – 862 791 – 821 30 -41 71
21 1447.9 – 1462.9 1495.5 – 1510.9 15 48 33
22 3410 – 3500 3510 – 3600 90 100 10
23 2000 – 2020 2180 – 2200 20 180 160
24 1625.5 – 1660.5 1525 – 1559 34 -101.5 135.5
25 1850 – 1915 1930 – 1995 65 80 15
26 814 – 849 859 – 894 30 / 40 10
27 807 – 824 852 – 869 17 45 28
28 703 – 748 758 – 803 45 55 10
29 n/a 717 – 728 11
30 2305 – 2315 2350 – 2360 10 45 35
31 452.5 – 457.5 462.5 – 467.5 5 10 5

How Long Has User XYZ Been Logged In

And when was the last time they logged into their Exchange mailbox? Very important questions on the Microsoft side of the house.

Currently have an Exchange 2010 server on-prem (soon O365) and several aged accounts that needed to be disabled.

On a Windows machine open a command prompt and type quser.exe. This will show you all of the users currently logged in as well as when they logged in, and any idle time. Especially helpful on the Terminal Services hosts/RDS machines.
USERNAME SESSIONNAME ID STATE IDLE TIME LOGON TIME
>BSDMAN console 1 Active none 9/8/2017 7:31 AM
>ADMIN rdp-tcp#0 2 Active none 9/11/2017 11:52 AM

How about for Mailbox exchange users?
Open the Exchange Management PowerShell
get-mailboxstatistics -server YOUREXSERVERNAME | sort LastLogonTime -Decending
To save it to a file just add the > c:\temp\ex_last_logon.txt to the end.

Profit.

Xibo Install Ubuntu 17.04

Technically this guide could be used for 16.04 and 16.10 (maybe even 17.10 when it arrives), but I tested on 17.04. I wanted to get Xibo installed to stop using a monthly subscription for terrible service, save some money, be the hero, and get a slightly larger bonus.

Install Ubuntu 17.04
LAMP
Mail
Standard
OpenSSH

Enable Root, SSHD Config (optional, may make your configuration less secure)
sudo passwd root
newpassword
sudo su -
nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
PermitRootLogin yes
Ctrl x
y
service sshd restart

Update Your Server
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
y

Install PHP 5.6
I know, by default LAMP installs PHP 7 now. We need PHP 5.6+ but less than 7.
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
apt-get update
apt-get install php7.0 php5.6 php5.6-mysql php-gettext php5.6-mbstring php-mbstring php7.0-mbstring php-xdebug libapache2-mod-php5.6 libapache2-mod-php7.0

Install PHP 7 (NOTE: XIBO CURRENTLY DOES NOT SUPPORT PHP 7+, SO THESE NOTES ARE TO BE DISREGARDED)
apt-get install php-gd php-mcrypt php-soap php-dom php-curl php-zip

Switch From PHP7 to PHP5.6
a2dismod php7.0 ; sudo a2enmod php5.6 ; sudo service apache2 restart
update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php5.6

Switch From PHP5.6 to PHP7 (OPTIONAL)
a2dismod php5.6 ; sudo a2enmod php7.0 ; sudo service apache2 restart
update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php7.0

Download XIBO, Change Permissions on Apache (Currently version 1.8.2)
wget https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-cms/releases/download/1.8.2/xibo-cms-1.8.2.tar.gz
tar xvzf xibo-cms-1.8.2.tar.gz
mv xibo-cms-1.8.2 /var/www/html/xibo-server
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/xibo-server
apache2ctl restart

Create XIBO Uploads Directory
mkdir /var/www/xibouploads
My Default www (documentroot) location is /var/www/html, so this created directory is outside of the www realm (good thing).
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/xibouploads

Configure XIBO Installation
Open a web browser to http://YOURSERVERIP/xibo-server/web/install/index.php
You may want to change your document root or apache virtual host at a later time because remembering http://YOURSERVERIP/xibo-server/web/index.php/login is a PITA.
Follow the white rabbit wizard to complete the setup.

Edit Apache and Redirect
I ended up creating a virtual host for my system and adding a redirect (there was a pesky “I want to load /login instead of index.php” issue).
nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
At the bottom add:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin ITSUPPORT@yourcompany.tld
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/xibo-server/web
ServerName xibo
ServerAlias xibo.yourdomain.local
<Directory “/var/www/html/xibo-server/web”>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Enable modrewrite in apache with a2enmod rewrite, or cp /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ | apache2ctl restart
sudo a2enmod rewrite

Add the /login redirect
nano /var/www/html/xibo-server/web/.htaccess
At the bottom add the following:

Redirect /login/ /index.php

Excel Shared Workbook Option Missing

So I had been used to having shared workbooks/excel sheets for years. It allowed me to have a single repository for a ton of useful information that I could share with others – and have them edit accordingly. But when I went to start a new one (at my new job, yay!) with Office 2016, I found the option had been replaced with “co-authoring”. Co-authoring is roughly the same feature set but it required the use of sharepoint, onedrive for business, etc. We’re not currently in O365 land, so this wasn’t a great option for me. Where’s my shared workbook??

Open Excel
File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar
List All Commands (drop down)
Scroll down to Compare and Merge Workbooks and click Add
Scroll down to Protect Sharing (Legacy) and click Add
Scroll down to Share Workbook (Legacy) and click Add
Scroll down to Track Changes (Legacy) and click Add
Now you technically only need the Share Workbook option, but since I had used the other options to track changes and do comparisons, I figured you may find those options useful as well.
Click OK.

The four new options (or fewer if you selected less than 4) show up at the top of Excel. Yay!

Tweaking Ubuntu 16.04LTS

Still on my Ubuntu kick even 8 months later. I figured it’s about time to redo the laptop so I should mark down my notes.

I ended up installing the Unity Tweak Tool to make many changes I felt would benefit myself (yeah I even installed the Windows10 Icons Theme…)
sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

I also fixed the scrolling issues with firefox. On the 7370 with touchscreen, touching the screen on any webpage in FF I was only selecting text and images which made my life more interesting.

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
Search for Exec
Exec=env MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 firefox %u
Save and close

Someone also pointed out that single vs double fingers may make a difference. It didn’t for me, but I’ll still make a note of it.
about:config to set dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled=1 (default was 2)

I’ll eventually have to set this up as my primary workstation and get Office to function correctly under wine.

Install Cacti Ubuntu 17.04

Yeah I know, I’m usually not one to use a non-LTS ubuntu installation. But I needed to utilize some of the newest tech, so it happened to be on my test machine. And I needed Cacti and LDAP authentication.

Either way, do the usual updates first:
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

Install Cacti from the repo (good enough, although AZ would tell me not to)
apt-get install cacti-spine
There are some wizard questions it asks here, just fill them out.
apt-get install php-ldap

Configure Cacti
http://theserversIP/cacti
Login with your admin account – in my case I forgot I had set the password to my root one, so that’s what I used.

To reset the admin account password back to the default of ‘admin’:

mysql -u root -p cacti
update user_auth set password=md5('admin') where username='admin';
Profit

LDAP Settings:

I should note that these work on a Server 2012 R2 Std Active Directory domain with Cacti running version 0.8.8h PHP 7.0.22.
(Configuration > Settings > Authentication)
Select LDAP Authentication
I picked Guest user “guest” and User Template “admin” because I just wanted to get this to work for testing – just allowing all users admin access is NOT a good idea.

Server: FQDN or IP of a domain controller
Port Standard: 389
Port SSL (not used): 636
Protocol Version: Version 3
Encryption: None (plain text ftw)
Referrals: Disabled
Mode: Specific Searching
Distinguished Name (DN): blank
Require Group Membership: unchecked

Group Distinguished Name (DN): CN=Information Technology,OU=Groups,OU=LocalUsers,DC=DOMAINNAME,DC=LOCAL
Group Member Attribute: member
Group Member Type: Distinguished Name

Search Base: OU=LocalUsers,DC=DOMAINNAME,DC=LOCAL
Search Filter: (&(objectclass=user)(objectcategory=user)(userPrincipalName=*))
Search Distinguished Name (DN): svc.cactildap@domainname.local (this is your ldap service account)
Search Password: ******* (this is your ldap service account password)

I should note that the Search Filter could replace “userPrincipalName” with sAMAccountName, but this one worked for me. I should also note you should have a service account created for your LDAP lookups – I create a new svc account for each one (svc.cactildap@domain.tld) so if account lockouts happen etc, AND I have this logon to permissions set to just the domain controllers and my cacti box.

I then opened my browser to the http://theserversIP/cacti and used my login svc.cactildap with the password to test. I just used my bsdman account and it worked – no need to add the domain\user or user@domain.

Add Second Drive to Linux

I added a new disk using PVE (Proxmox) as a secondary IDE drive. Primary is 30GB. Running Ubuntu 14.04LTS (I know I should upgrade to 16, but I’m lazy)
Secondary drive is 400GB and I marked it NO Backup.
Adding a secondary HDD to linux is pretty easy.

List all of the drives
fdisk -l

In my case it showed that /dev/sdb didn’t have a partition table. That fact, added to the other fact I know I was using sda already, made my choice pretty easy. Don’t take my word for it and actually fact-check against your own equipment!

Create partition on the drive
fdisk /dev/sdb
n
p
1
Enter
w

“N” for new, “P” for primary partition, “1” for partition number, “w” to write table to disk and exit. Most of these are the defaults anyway, so hitting “enter” a bunch of times works.

Create the filesystem
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1
Enter a bunch of times

Display the UUID of the new partition/drive
blkid /dev/sdb1
Should get something back like /dev/sdb1: UUID=”98d83dk-e4c3-38cd89-3830c0909903″ TYPE=”ext4″

Add to FSTAB
*note* Adam will laugh at my use of NANO, but I’m a creature of habit.
nano /etc/fstab
Add the UUID to the bottom:
#/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb ext4 defaults 0 0
UUID=98d83dk-e4c3-38cd89-3830c0909903 /mnt/sdb ext4 defaults 0 0

Make directory and Mount the drive
mkdir /mnt/sdb
mount -a

Profit!